Game of Thrones Discussion, S6E9: What’s Black and White and Red All Over?

In one of the most heart-pounding and stressful of all Games of Thrones episodes, Jon and his rag-tag group of attackers face off against the the superior forces of the sadistic Ramsay Bolton, in an episode that was brilliantly directed, shot, choreographed, and edited.

TLF Game of Thrones central is posting this recap later than usual so that we could fully process all its implications — and recover! Catch your breath along with three fans with different perspectives. Rosalyn Claret, who has read the books yet says she “forgets” how many times; Laura Fletcher, a casual fan of the television and book series; and Cheryl Collins, who does not read. Maester Corrin Bennet-Kill is on hiatus.

Please join the discussion in comments!

Rosalyn
This was a very stressful episode!

Laura
I had lots of heart-racing feels and face-covering moments!!!

Cheryl
I had to keep stopping the action, walk around the room, restart. Way too stressful.

Laura
Should we start with Meereen, the strangely calmer third of the episode, even though it involved fire-breathing dragons?

Cheryl
“Always seems a bit abstract, doesn’t it? Other people dying,” Tyrion says, as catapults rain on the city below. This episode seemed to be an effort to remove that abstraction.

Rosalyn
I thought about that quote again and again as I watched.

Laura
Speaking of Tyrion, in the last episode and this one he said that Meereen was resurrected, living a second life.

Rosalyn
“A man reborn.”

Laura
And he also used the word “rebirth.” The “reborn” nature of Meereen, in addition to the parallels with resurrection everywhere this season, seem to stress the cyclical nature of history — something Dany (with the Greyjoys) and Jon (with Sansa and company) are trying to break. This will not be the world of their fathers.

Rosalyn
Yes, not the world of their fathers. But aside from being a thought one could rally behind, we were also reminded of the randomness and futility of it all: they’re all in this position because “your ancestor attacked my ancestor.”

Cheryl
What can we say about Dany? It was at the end of last season that the Sons of the Harpy tried to assassinate her and she flew away and was taken by the Dothraki. This was a redux version, except she flew “in” this time and brought the Dothraki with her.

Rosalyn
I did not really get her blaming Tyrion for the city being under attack. I was not on board with her judgey face. She’s the one who took the city with no plan and flew away on a damn dragon to an undisclosed location.

Rosalyn
Maybe it was just implacable, not judging or blaming. I can see that. It was neatly done, how they had Tyrion make his “alternate suggestion” while providing some exposition about the history of her father seeking to burn King’s Landing, and conveniently reminding us about the wildfire caches.

Cheryl
Both our two presumptive queens seemed to show off some not-exactly-admirable traits this episode.

Laura
Tyrion was the “ice” to Dany’s “fire,” yes? Just as Sansa is the fire to Jon’s ice.

Cheryl
Tyrion comes off quite well, I thought. Both Tyrion and Sansa behind the scenes were making things happen. And good thing that Tyrion unshackled those dragons earlier in the season.

Rosalyn
It is such a relief to see Tyrion interacting in a meaningful way, in the middle of action, with another major character. I feel like they should have simply used some silent-film-style placards saying “Tyrion’s Still Here, Yo” and saved us some painful waiting-around scenes in the pyramid this season. Maybe for Arya, too.

Laura
In many ways, Dany isn’t a lot different than Lady Lyanna Mormont. This whole generation is so young and ambitious, but unprepared. None of the leaders of these battles were over 22.

Cheryl
I was reminded of a point you both have made, that so many of the fighting generation have been wiped out — and now even more after yesterday’s carnage — just when they need men to protect them from the invaders from the north.

Laura
I think the best meaning we can glean out of the painful Tyrion-Missandei-Grey Worm scenes is Tyrion’s remark about fermentation [see last week’s post], and the obvious point that slavery is a bigger, deeper, more ingrained issue than simple politics or even economics can explain.

Cheryl
And it’s hard to impose change on people.

Rosalyn
Yes, and slavery is bigger than those born free can grasp. In this episode, we see Missandei and Grey Worm reacting to the idea of being “sold” again. And we see that the Masters don’t anticipate Grey Worm speaking directly to their slave soldiers behind them; they forget that they’re people.

Cheryl
Did that scene remind you of the one in the slaver’s market from a few seasons ago, when Dany was ostensibly “selling” the dragon? And then she fried them — surprise! Same kind of moment.

Rosalyn
Again, “It sounds so abstract, other people dying.” We see commanders and queens watching people ride into battle several times in this episode.
Laura
The battles were reminiscent of hyper-realistic war films like “Saving Private Ryan.”

Cheryl
Right. The siege of Meereen was happening far away, in the distance, behind them. I totally agree with you Laura about the hyperrealism — that’s what I mean about making the abstract real. War is not fun or romantic or easy.

You can get crushed to death, even if you are a great swordsman.

Laura
I just can’t believe I’m saying anything regarding “hyperrealism” about a fictional series with dragons in it, but yeah.

Cheryl
And then the Greyjoys show up.

Laura
In some ways, the “girl power” thing was too much for me, and I really, really like Yara. The best part for me was when the deal was struck that prevents the Ironborn from reaving, pillaging, and raping anymore.

Rosalyn
I think it rode that line pretty closely, flirting with “over the top,” but I went with it.

Cheryl
With sexual titillation between Dany and Yara. And Theon playing the typically “female” submissive role.

Laura
The sexual titillation was really fun. Way to save the previous brothel scene with Yara that I thought was a bit flip with her sexuality and preferences!

Rosalyn
There was a lot of wink-wink “we have to stick together in a man’s world”… on a show written and produced and directed by men.

I’m just poking at it a little. I think it worked. But it worked because the bargain they struck made sense and was logical, too, which could underpin the “I like you” bits. So I felt freer to enjoy their friendly interaction because I knew it wasn’t just gratuitously bending the plot around characters we want to see on the same side.

Cheryl
Yes, logic is such a nice thing when it happens in this show.

I liked also that they referred back to Season 1 when Theon saw Tyrion at Winterfell. I bet we get more of those references.

Rosalyn
And Theon is telling it all like it is.

Cheryl
No ego left there, in Theon.

Rosalyn
I don’t know if that’s his way of atoning, if that’s Reek coming out, if that’s his way of demonstrating just how far his ego has been obliterated — or, possibly, asserting it. He knows how he feels. He knows what he’s done. He doesn’t want others to forget and move on, and he is insisting they don’t, himself.

Cheryl
So now Dany has ships, the Greyjoys, Dothraki, Unsullied, and who knows who else and is ready to head to Westeros — after we find the results of Varys’s diplomatic mission.

Rosalyn
But, what will the Ironborn be without reaving? What will the Seven Kingdoms be if it’s just Six Kingdoms? That’s a hard bargain for Yara. How will she rule? But it couldn’t just work out prettily for everyone, so I think it makes sense.

Laura
Theon will always be dealing with the fallout of his past, both pre-Reek and Reek, but that pep talk from Yara did seem to help.

And Yara can really carry a scene without any drama or even volume to her voice.

Laura
I also liked how we jumped to meeting the Greyjoys with a cut to a close-up of Tyrion’s face talking to Theon — it was a surprise but a good one, deftly delivered.

Rosalyn
I thought, “Winterfell is being mentioned in the Great Pyramid? Who is he talking to?”

There was a bit of dialogue that could serve as a recurring idea: “I don’t demand, but I’m up for whatever,” Yara says about “marriage.” A few minutes later, “She’s not demanding, she’s asking,” Dany corrects Tyrion, about taking the Iron Islands. Hmm.

Cheryl
OK, on to the meat of this episode. That amazing battle sequence.

Rosalyn
When you feel stressed out watching a show, you know it was effective.

Cheryl
I really did think Jon was gonna bite it, so when the hero’s fate is unclear, it *is effective, as you say.

Let’s start with that meeting in the field on the day before battle. I liked the way Jon handled it. He has a lot more emotional intelligence here than we’ve seen before.

He was confident and threw Ramsay’s shit right back at him, which I did not expect.

And Sansa sees Ramsay the first time since her escape.

Rosalyn
How Ramsay relishes using that word, “bastard.” Directed at someone other than himself.

Laura
Jon was confident, but still trying to plan a fight against a normal enemy.

Cheryl
Sansa: “you will die tomorrow, Ramsay Bolton.” She is confident and we later learn why.

Laura
I think even Ramsay’s use of “bastard” repeatedly was a way of underselling his psychotic plans. Yes, I think it did get under Jon’s skin a bit, but Ramsay knew that wasn’t the secret weapon. The secret weapon was always going to be Rickon.

Rosalyn
And Sansa knows it.

Cheryl
The question is, why did she not want to tell Jon about the Vale’s troops? I have one answer. And it makes me sad.

Rosalyn
There’s so much she can face, cold and clear-eyed, and Jon is still catching up to how different she is from the little girl he knew.

I thought their dialogue was pretty realistic, really. They each had some good points to make but also devolved quickly into “If you just did what I said” and rehashing the same fight — and then being angry but still sort of dismayed at the raised voices. This is how arguments really happen in real life, under stress. You don’t just make nice reasonable points, you get petty.

Laura
I think Sansa was being used as a plot device, which turns out to be a good and bad thing, the way I read it. If she’d told Jon about the troops in advance, not only did she risk making a promise that Littlefinger wouldn’t fulfill (he would back out or just not arrive in time), she risked Jon declining their help to avoid entanglement with Baelish and his machinations.

Cheryl
I wish I could think that, Laura.

Rosalyn
Do you think Jon would do that? What does he know of Littlefinger, really? Rather than just jump at the chance for more men?
Laura
I think Jon would want the Vale troops lined up with his. And maybe that would have made the difference in the primary battle and fewer Stark-sided men would have died.

But maybe, just maybe, the narrative was going to be better if Sansa “won” the battle for their side, symbolizing how she knows the enemy better than anyone else. It’s thin, and it’s overly hopeful, but it kind of makes sense.

Cheryl
I think that just as Ramsay was willing to sacrifice his own troops on the battlefield (with his relentless arrow volleys), Sansa was willing to use Jon’s attack as a diversion.

Rosalyn
Yeah. That nags at me.

Cheryl
Remember what Tormund says: how easily that knights on horses can cut down troops on foot.

Laura
Right, “like piss through snow.” Ah, poetic Tormund.

Cheryl
The battle scene had lots and lots and lots of horse carnage. Then the final shots on the battlefield were of the Vale knights cutting right through the last of Ramsay’s troops.

Rosalyn
At the same time, Ramsay is nearly inconceivably deranged and sadistic, and it would make sense that Sansa knows the enemy. She doesn’t know about battle strategy, but she’s like an intel analyst.

Laura
For example, if Sansa had succeeded in convincing Jon that Rickon would be used as one of Ramsay’s playthings in order to break Jon at the start of the battle, then Jon would have just tried to rescue Rickon and probably ended up dying — along with Tormund and whoever else helped.

I’m not saying Sansa read the tea leaves exactly right, but I bet she would have gotten there if Jon had supported her and let her think it through with him.

Rosalyn
And Sansa, oh, the pain of being ignored around the conference table. But at least she waits to confront Jon alone. Catelyn embarrassed Robb in front of his men, it seems to me.

Cheryl
Something Sansa said in her first conversation in the episode nags at me: “No one can protect me. No one can protect anyone”

That to me says, “You fool. I am not going to protect you. I can’t protect you. And I have to protect myself.”

Laura
Ooh, that’s a harsh read, but possibly fair!

Laura
And Jon doesn’t just let Sansa have the same death wish he has. He still needs a little feminist learnin’, methinks! (Where’s Ygritte when you need her, am I right?)

Cheryl
I think she waited to use the Vale’s troops until Ramsay was most vulnerable.

Jon almost died many times. Sansa nearly sacrificed him. There is no good reason for her to not tell Jon about those extra troops, except to surprise both him and Ramsay.

Rosalyn
It seems like a plot hole to me, which is unfortunate, because a lot of this episode held together pretty well otherwise.

Laura
This also gives Baelish and the Vale a clear victory, credit for the win. Sansa, too, but I wonder if part of how she got Littlefinger there was the promise that he would get to swoop in at the end?

Cheryl
I think Sansa — like Dany, the other wannabe queen — is traveling to the dark side.
Laura
I like Sansa’s inscrutability, provided it pays off somehow. We shall see.

Rosalyn
Two little things from these scenes are details I appreciate. I think Jon and Sansa are both still in the process of coming to grips with how different each of them are now, what the other has been through, and we’re seeing them still in the midst of that. Neither quite gets it.

Also, there were several little culture clash moments presented between the Wildlings and the people south of the wall. The show could have ignored that consequence of their integration, but didn’t. It makes sense.

Laura
Can we talk about Melisandre and Jon’s conversation? That’s one scene that I thought was really effective.

Melisandre is another broken hero. It’s no coincidence we also get Davos learning the whole truth about what she did for Stannis: sacrifice Shireen.

Rosalyn
Melisandre echoes Jon’s words about the battle, though. “What kind of a god would do a thing like that,” he asks. “The one we’ve got.” We ride into battle with the army we’ve got. We do what we can with what we’re given.

Cheryl
Melisandre is also not making high-fallutin’ justifications anymore, not ascribing motives that she believes only she can see and understand.

Laura
She was guileless. God isn’t great, but he’s powerful. She fulfills his will by interpreting signs, not infallibly.

Rosalyn
It’s very different than the old Melisandre. She hedges. She basically says she guesses what the Lord of Light wants, as best she can.

This is a very different Melly: she was not at the war council — she was practically Stannis’s shadow, before — and not making grand pronouncements.

Laura
And she says, “Don’t lose” to Jon. Not “you can’t lose” or “you will win.” She’s still not sure what’s going to happen.

Rosalyn
It’s odd that as we see her being a bit — redeemed? — there’s the ominous fact of Davos’s knowledge about Shireen, still looming.

Jon’s request not to bring him back struck me. The thought was plain-spoken by Melisandre, that maybe he was meant just to serve this tiny role in the larger plan, that he was “brought back to die.” He faces the cruelty of being used as a tool toward some other purpose. Like men use other men, as rulers do throughout this world.

(It’s always so abstract, Melisandre, when it’s other people you’re sacrificing to your Lord …)

Cheryl
It was Episode 9 last season when Shireen was burned to death. I think Melisandre will be paying for Shireen’s death soon.

Rosalyn
She has to pay, but that tension is heightened by the fact that her character is finally evolving.

Cheryl
It felt to me like Jon is a quite reluctant warrior at this point. As for his desire not to come back if he fell, it seemed like he senses there are worse things than death and that he’s tired of the fighting.

Rosalyn
Maybe it’s not exactly a death wish but close to it; a realization of the cost of the game, the thought of being a tiny piece of a chessboard, that makes it seem random and all for nothing. So much comes from chance or powerful people using others and pitting families against one another generations and centuries later.

I think this was a theme in the episode: nothing is fated.

Cheryl
So on to the battle.

Throughout those scenes, Jon is in the thick of the fighting, in full battle fury — covered in blood and gore — while Ramsay is far away from the action.

Laura
Ramsay wants to command troops, and moreover he wants to watch the carnage. But he only fights from a distance: literally with arrows, and figuratively with his masochism.

Jon is a killing machine. Jon and Tormund just slice through soldiers and their horses like legendary warriors.

Rosalyn
Like legendary warriors … but also like confused, lost, dazed people.

Laura
Even with all that, both Jon and Tormund nearly die repeatedly.

Cheryl
Yeah, the editing was brilliant — it really showed Jon in a killing frenzy.

But in another of several examples of thwarted narratives, or upended expectations, Jon is almost crushed to death — not exactly a heroic end.

The first example of this when he faces down Ramsay’s charging horses. The look on his face is, “OK, here is where I am gonna die and I’m ready.” He draws his sword, the mournful strings rise to a crescendo as he faces the onslaught, and then VAROOM come the horses from behind him to shift the narrative.

Rosalyn
That’s why I liked the battle scene so much. We get this very dramatic, heroic shot of Jon drawing his sword — one lone man against an oncoming army — who is then promptly drowned in the chaos of battle.

This battle scenes showed all the tiny spaces between his engagements with enemies, looking for the next threat or the next target. At one point the camera zooms out to show how all these tiny singular engagements make up the battle itself: the micro and the macro.

Laura
I like the words you both used — crushed and drowned. There was something very un-supernatural, mundane about the battle — almost like a forces of nature. The “hail” of arrows, the “surging sea” of cavalry …

Cheryl
… and a mountain of bodies. The battle had a will of its own.

Rosalyn
A force that you can’t control at all, just have to be consumed by it and do what you can to live.

Laura
Contrast that with all the dragon-breathing and wight-fighting battles.

Cheryl
Do you think, like me, that Ramsay was sacrificing his troops with those arrow hails? And the horses, lots and lots of horses.

Davos made a point of saying, don’t shoot, we’ll only kill our own men.
Laura
Absolutely, he was willing to kill some of his own forces because he callously knew he had enough men to spare.

In the end, this was maybe the perfect “big boss fight” to have with Ramsay: he’s the biggest villain of the show who has no supernatural connection.

Rosalyn
Sansa was totally right. Jon and Davos had planned the battle with their perceptions about Ramsay’s motivations (or so they thought) and their knowledge of war and strategy (which Tormund didn’t understand; his command to his own men to “Run and fight!” made me laugh). But they were both wrong.

Cheryl
And in the end Ramsay was a coward who Jon was able to attack and best with hand-to-hand combat. He did not even know how to defend himself, the fucking coward.

Laura
When you can get past Ramsay’s psychological torture, he’s just a scary clown with no real weapons.

They thought their battle plan was solid: that Jon had sufficiently rattled Ramsay by challenging him to one-on-one combat, and that the trenches would at least force Ramsay’s troops to march from just one direction.
Rosalyn
And Sansa warned, “Don’t do what he wants.” He plays the games. He lays the traps.”

The knights of the Vale never looked so heroic, sitting out on all the battles of all the books to date, dickering in their mountain lair. Who knew they had so many men!
Cheryl
I rewatched the battle scenes from back in Season 1 when Robb captures Jaime. The way Robb wins is this: he sends 2,000 men in one direction, where the Lannisters expect him, and then swept elsewhere to surprise them. All those two thousand men were killed. Afterward Robb says, “I sent two thousand men to their deaths today” — because it was just a diversion. They were lambs to slaughter. That’s what I think happened here. Jon had approximately the same number of men. The Vale troops’ plan was wait until most or all of the horses were dead and then swoop in.

Laura
So that very much suggests that was what Sansa was doing … right?

Cheryl
I think so, Laura. But that’s just me.

Rosalyn
Did Sansa need to deceive her own side, and sacrifice her own side, for that plan to work? Or was it really just “oh gee, the Vale shows up right in the nick of time”?
Cheryl
I put it in the “deceived on purpose” category — because otherwise why did she not tell him beforehand and do it behind his back? “No one protects anyone.” She is out to protect herself and feels no one else will do it. This episode highlighted what happens to Ramsay’s victims, I guess.

Laura
No coincidence that we get a Theon-reemergence the same episode as Sansa’s victory.

Cheryl
The smile on Sansa’s face as she walks away from Ramsay being chewed to death — after she lingers to watch — has me feeling not too good about her emotional core.

Laura
Sansa’s smile after Ramsay’s death was also right after he promised her that a part of him would always be with her, and unfortunately I think that’s turning out to be true. That torture had an effect, like it or not.

Rosalyn
I had the same thought. I’m afraid that it’s true.

His House will disappear, his name will disappear, but the effects of his violence won’t and can’t, because the survivors live on.

He’s such a sick fuck, I wouldn’t put it past him to understand with perfect clarity the psychological effects of his violence, and to relish it. I was not surprised that he would say something so perceptive about the lasting effects of pain.

Cheryl
I was thinking that the scene in which the Stark forces are surrounded seems to parallel the last scenes of last season, when Dany, Tyrion, Jorah, et al. were surrounded in the arena as the Sons of the Harpy close in, and Dany makes peace with death. And then Drogon happens.

Rosalyn
That’s right, right down to the defenders pressed into a tight circle surrounded by the enemy.

Did anyone else think/hope/guess that maybe the Karstarks and Umbers would turn sides, also right in the nick of time? I kind of did, but I guess that was a bit silly. They really have no reason to fight for Jon.
Laura
There goes that theory that the Umbers were planting Rickon with the Boltons, huh? We’re reminded just how embittered the Northern families are with the Starks.

Cheryl
One example of terrible writing, IMHO, was the scene of Tormund and Davos bonding — and I’m sorry Davos didn’t have any of that fermented goat’s milk. What a waste of a scene.

Rosalyn
Part of their bonding is to reflect on the fact that they both followed men into battle and were both wrong. “Maybe that’s our problem,” Davos says, “following kings.” “Jon Snow is not a king,” replies Tormund.

Laura
Which is funny, since Mance Rayder was pretty firmly “not a king” too, but whatever.
Rosalyn
We also had a moment where Davos admits that Stannis was his own worst enemy and the key to his own undoing.
Cheryl
The shot where Davos finds the statuette was just beautiful — standing in the snow against the wide sky at sunset. There really were some astonishingly beautiful shots in this episode.

Rosalyn
But after the battle, there’s Melisandre in Winterfell; her vision came true.
Laura
I felt Davos finding the carved stag — which had to be prefaced painfully and obviously in flashback — was even more of a “C’mon, really?” moment than Daario and Jorah finding Dany’s ring.

Cheryl
Stannis was his own worse enemy, and he killed his kid, which is a big no-no on this show.

Rosalyn
Melisandre is feeling good, but Davos is watching.
Cheryl
Now Petyr is Warden of the North without the Boltons in the way, right?
Laura
Well, according to royal decree he is, but how would that play out with the men of the Vale? Robin’s nominally in charge of them, right, so why would Baelish get a higher position? Again, Littlefinger is playing multiple sides here.

Cheryl
Petyr also conspired with Olenna to kill Joffrey, and was named Warden of the North by Cersei — so yeah, he’s unpredictable.

In all of this, Jon is a pawn, and I hate that.

Laura
Conspired with Olenna, and against her (via his spy Olyvar who ratted out Loras to the High Sparrow, which implicated Margaery in a lie), then against Cersei (getting Lancel to expose her incestuous affair with him).

Cheryl
So complicated and hard to keep track of!
Rosalyn
Should we talk about Ramsay’s death?

Laura
First, we see Jon hold back from killing Ramsay as he looks up at Sansa. There’s an unspoken agreement there, right?
Cheryl
I agree. Jon’s leaving him to Sansa.

Laura
She is left to decide what to “do” with him. I would guess it’s Sansa who has him put in the kennels.
Rosalyn
Ramsay, coming to, tied up, at first doesn’t believe Sansa will kill him. Then he tries to believe the dogs won’t harm him. Perhaps he envisions Sansa punishing him by keeping him in the kennels. (Where Theon had lived.)

Ramsay makes his sicko comment about “You can’t kill me. I’m a part of you now.”

Laura
Ramsay thinks he’ll be held prisoner. As we’ve seen again and again, Ramsay assumes that Stark honor will stick with them. But Sansa has learned from the “best” (that is, the worst) and knows that Ramsay holds no value (Littlefinger’s lesson) and that some people just deserve to die (ironically, Ramsay’s lesson to her).

Cheryl
You have the feeling that Sansa has been fantasizing about this moment for a long time and had been trying to figure out the best way to do it.
Rosalyn
The key moment in this scene — and probably in the entire story arc for Ramsay — is when he starts to insist the hounds know their master, and won’t harm him.

“They’re loyal beasts,” he says. Sansa replies: “They were. Now they’re starving.” A parable for Ramsay’s use of men.

Cheryl
Laura, you’ve made me think of what Tyrion says earlier in the episode to the masters: some things cannot be forgiven. There’s another tie between those two.

Rosalyn
I think this episode examines the results of deploying people as tools, whether in the service of kings or queens or priestesses. For an interminable time, Ramsay has not seen the consequences of his misuse of people.

But here it is: when people are desperate — if you starve them of what they need — loyalties fall apart. They lash out. Roose tried to make this point to Ramsay a few episodes ago, but Sansa is making it more … effectively.
Laura
The closest Ramsay ever came to seeing consequences of his actions, as we talked about when it happened, was the death of Ramsay’s girlfriend.

Rosalyn
The final scene forced me to think a lot about the narrative purpose of Ramsay and his extended, unrelenting awfulness. What purpose does he serve? It might have been because Sansa had so far to transition. She was perhaps the least bloodthirsty, most romantic person in the entire series, and he had to be awful enough for Sansa to kill unhesitatingly.

Cheryl
Excellent point. What can transform a person so dramatically? Ramsay was her crucible.

I found her smile chilling — that and the fact that she lingered to watch a man eaten alive by dogs. Wow.

Rosalyn
I mean that less in a “Sansa abuse as plot tool and character development shortcut” way (though the series has been guilty of this), and more in line with the season’s examination of the consequences of taking a life and how it changes you.

Arya had to consider these lessons, and we spent a lot of time learning them with her.

The Hound has been wrestling with this, too.
Laura
I also think, in the end, that Ramsay was a symbol of the sheer terror and cruelty that can come from mundane — not supernatural — forces.

Cheryl
“A life for a life,” to circle back to … ?
Rosalyn
“It takes life to pay for life.” This was first uttered in season/book 1, when Daenerys is trying to convince the prisoner of the Dothraki — the witch. (It was about saving Drogo, and in return, her baby was born “an abomination” and died.)
Laura
Of course Shireen is my first thought there.
Rosalyn
Jon, Jaime, Dany, Melisandre: lots of people have been taking lives either by command or by their own hand.

Now that Sansa’s sister’s had to consider the consequences of killing and vengeance, and to weigh her power to take lives carefully, it made me wonder if Ramsay was made so awful for so long in order to spare Sansa of having to bear the burden of having killed. But I think she bears it in a different way.

That’s why I interpreted Ramsay’s jab to her the way I did: that she’ll never be free of him.

Laura
I like the idea of drawing parallels between Sansa and Arya. We’ve already done that by comparing the Waif to Ramsay.

Rosalyn
Right! But maybe it’s worse. She starts to turn away… but then she turns back. And watches.

Laura
And even when Sansa turns away, she smiles at the sounds of his death.

Cheryl
Those “abstract” deaths may feel more real for Arya now, but I’m not sure Sansa is there yet. She has not learned the lesson yet that Arya has of the futility of seeking revenge.

Rosalyn
People with power over life and death need to figure out how to use that power and how to bear that power.

Laura
So Sansa’s murder-by-dogs of Ramsay of course reminds us of Ramsay’s similar murder of his stepmother, Walda Frey, and her newborn son. Ramsay didn’t watch the dogs eat Walda. Ramsay’s death sentence was about style as much as justice.

Cheryl
It was Walda’s death that made me think that Ramsay would meet his end by being chewed to death (as well as sending his lover’s remains to be butchered for dog meat), but I thought it could be the direwolves. I did not even consider his own hounds.

Rosalyn
I love that Ramsay was afraid at the end. (And now I feel bad for loving that!) But we wanted him to know fear.

Laura
As audience members, we were all made a bit complicit in that horrific death.

Rosalyn
My last thoughts are on the battle scenes.

The “Battle of the Bastards” was just a marvel. It captured the chaos and confusion of the individual decisions that made up the larger battle — as Jon moved from enemy to enemy almost without purpose. Jon seems lost, drowning. I didn’t even see Tormund bite Karstark’s throat — the scene was a blur.

But the sequence also successfully gave a sense of the larger movements with wide shots. The terrifying press by the Bolton shield wall, the men getting crushed into a sea of people — burying one another —dead men and dying men forming a wall of bodies, and then the Vale all blue and silver plowing in and breaking the line with the cavalry.

It was just a brilliant balance of large-scale action and small-scale, intense, tunnel-vision experience of being in the thick of battle.

Laura
The aerial shots played up that “force of nature” angle, with incredible patterns and order, while the close-ups — especially of Jon’s feral, muddy face once he emerged from near-suffocation — made humans look like animals.

Rosalyn
And I say this because it did its job — communicating what was happening, but also communicating the total confusion and meaninglessness of battle. It wasn’t precisely satisfying to watch; it was stressful and terrifying, but we had to be saved from drowning in it ourselves, so we could follow the plot. It really pulled it off, I thought.

Cheryl
The directing, cinematography, and editing are brilliant. Especially effective is the accelerated, really frantic shots of Jon as a killing machine. The romance of battle was completely removed in those battle scenes. Carnage, protruding guts, lost limbs, screaming soldiers. We were reminded how much of survival on a battlefield is sheer dumb luck — especially reminded by that breathtaking tracking shot that followed Jon through the chaos of battle, when he was almost killed numerous times.

The thought that Sansa put him through that on purpose is beyond disappointing. While Jon was in the midst of it Sansa was watching from afar, with a small smile, seeing those deaths as abstract, at best.
Rosalyn
And I kept thinking, Jon is supposed to be the commander, but nothing could command this.

Laura
One other way of looking at Ramsay, besides my natural-disaster metaphor: he’s the ultimate narrative subversion. Cheryl, you’ve been catching these all season long.

Cheryl
I will repeat my now-tired repetition of how they used music to play with our expectations: as when Jon faced off against the oncoming horses, with mournful music building to a crescendo, and the sad “death is imminent” music as he was getting crushed.

It seems these are all efforts to play with our expectations. It’s the television version of GRRM, who plays with reader expectations by reversing standard narrative tropes.
Laura
For example, we should’ve seen that move with Rickon coming — the idea of executing him in front of Jon — but I bet none of us guessed it exactly right. Plus, because we’re on Team Stark, we were hoping until the last moment that Rickon would survive. Then, post-battle, we get the reversal of fortunes literally when Ramsay’s dogs eat him.

Rickon is also a reversal. Why would they bring back a character only to kill him off? Because that’s how it would happen in this terrible world. And now the whole North, Sansa and Jon included, think they’re the only Stark siblings left alive.

Rosalyn
Although he’s been gone for so long/offscreen for so long, his death makes narrative sense. We’ve gotten invested in the idea of him, but not the character itself, so his death doesn’t come at such a cost.

Laura
Unfortunately, this also means Sansa thinks she’s more important than she is (Stark-wise).
Cheryl
Remember how Rickon saw his father down in the catacombs, as Ned was killed? Like Bran did, in a “dream”? It’s interesting they made a point of mentioning where he was being buried.
Rosalyn
Rickon returns to the catacombs of Winterfell, where he started: in hiding with Osha.

Cheryl
It would be nice if they start to tie this together, because they have to fight the zombies soon. Somehow Arya has to get back — or try to — and Bran has to actually do something and serve some purpose.

An excellent episode. Extremely effective. Heart-pounding.

Now how will the plot advance in the last episode of the season? What alliances might we see upend all of our expectations?

SQUAWKS

Links between Jon and Daenerys

Cheryl: The fact that the only two stories told this past episode were of Jon and Dany tells me the show is stressing their connection.

Laura: The aerial shot of Jon emerging from the melee after nearly being trampled to death as he looked skyward was framed almost exactly like Daenerys’s triumphant crowd-surfing scene in the Season 3 finale.

[It turns out that Kit Harrington himself makes this comparison in an interview about the making of this episode. How smart are we?]

Game of Thrones’ Eye Obsession

Rosalyn: RIP, Wun Wun The last giant. I think that death helped push Jon over the edge.

Cheryl: An arrow shot to the eye. Another example of GoT’s obsession with eyes.

Laura: There was also Ramsay’s odd mention: when he said his starving dogs would maybe go for the eyes first (“or the balls”). Hungry dogs would just go for whatever looked easiest to bite; in other words, it seemed it was more about eye symbolism than anything else.

Cheryl: And Tormund seems to stab Karstark in the eye.

Rosalyn
Wildfire is getting teased too much to not matter a lot in the next episode.

Cheryl1. Jon starts out the episode ambivalent about his will to live — that is made clear by his directive to Melisandre not to resurrect him. But as he pushed his way up from that pile of bodies, he is exerting — reasserting — his will to live. He wants to live. He is “reborn.”

2. The number of times Jon almost dies — comes within millimeters of death — seems to go far beyond being mere lucky to miraculous. What might this mean?

3. Another example of what we are calling the thwarted narrative is when Jon and Umber find each other at the bottom of the pile of bodies and face-off — it seems certain that a battle to the death between them is imminent. The music cues that the final showdown is here. And then … Jon gets pushed against a dead horse, and is nearly crushed to death.

When the finally showdown does happen — the face-off between Jon and Ramsay — there is no music telling us what to expect or to manipulate our emotions.

4. At the end of Season 4, Mance Rayder and the Wildings stage an attack on the Wall and the vastly outnumbered Night’s Watch. We see the attackers from the perspective of the defenders, from on top of the Wall: they are small specks moving across the frozen expanse, not human.

We the audience thrilled that the Night’s Watch somehow were able to successfully defend themselves and Castle Black. One of the attackers is Tormund. A giant tries breaks to through the gate under the Wall and men of the Night’s Watch die, including Jon’s friend Pip.

And Ghost the direwolf eats a guy’s face off.

Fast forward to this episode, when Jon, what’s left of the Wildings — including Tormund — and a giant all fight on the same side and try to take Winterfell. The giant falls just as he finally breaks the gate.

And we know what happens to Ramsay.

Just another example of how this season’s events refer back to, mimic, and parallel those from the past. It seems to foreshadow some very interesting alliances in the last episode of the season. And also make us sympathetic to Dany’s goal to “break the wheel,” as men are used as pawns in games that never seem to change.

5. Does anyone else think looks like sperm impregnating an ovum?

6. Also, does anyone think that perhaps these famed paintings by Italian Renaissance master Paolo Ucello may have inspired some the shots in this episode?

Share this:

Like this:

Related

Comments

After reading though this discussion I am 100% behind the “dark” reading of Sansa’s keeping the Vale troops secret from Jon. During the meetings with Ramsay, with the Stark/wildling team, and with Jon, Sansa’s motivations are clearly different from everyone else’s. All her companions are focused on how to win the battle; Sansa is focused on Ramsay’s death. In many cases this would be foolhardy revenge-seeking, but with Ramsay she is exactly right — imagine what a difference in portent this episode would hold for Westeros if Ramsay escaped at the end. Plus, we know that some of Ramsay’s army are “almost” good-guy northerners who just got fed up with some previous Starks and/or are terrified of Ramsay.

Ramsay’s emotional injuries to Sansa end up forming the seeds of his own defeat, because they make palatable to her these calculations which would have previously been repugnant. Ramsay always wins because no one can imagine the things he will do. Sansa doesn’t have to imagine, but she isn’t able to convince Jon how deep the abyss is; she has to jump in to show him.

It also resonates a bit with the episode’s focus on bastards, and who is or isn’t one (remember that Roose Bolton legitimized Ramsay). Sansa flat out tells Jon she is willing to sacrifice Rickon — who I think she would recognize as the rightful Lord of Winterfell (what does she know about Bran at this point?) — in order to defeat Ramsay, so why wouldn’t she be willing to sacrifice her bastard half-brother?

Seeing Sansa as the red-haired, secretive sorceress willing to make a brutal familial sacrifice to win a battle for Winterfell makes Stannis’ attempt almost a perfect foreshadowing, with the difference in outcomes due to the fact that Sansa has gained a more nuanced view of the world compared to Melisandre’s blind faith.

Ooh, good point about the parallels between Stannis’s Winterfell attack and sacrifice of Shireen, and Sansa’s willingness to risk her brothers’ lives. In light of the latest episode, where we see Davos confront Melisandre with Shireen’s gruesome death and demand Jon punish her, how do you read the fact that Jon lets Sansa off basically scot-free while banishing Melisandre? (I may have preferred her to be executed, which makes me worry about my own morality, but Jon made the right/hard choice: don’t let her stay, but don’t kill her, either. Leadership makes the compromise that no one likes, right?)

Yeah, the different reactions/consequences to Sansa’s and Melisandre’s actions are interesting and I’m not sure yet what I make of them.

To some extent they are a version of the trolley problem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem) — Melisandre *chooses* to sacrifice Shireen, while Sansa *allows* Rickon’s death through inaction. (Plus the slight twists that Rickon was “tied to the tracks” by evil Ramsay and may have been impossible to save — does that absolve Sansa?)

It also seems possible that Jon and Davos still don’t completely understand what Sansa did. Maybe they accept she was right about the futility of saving Rickon, but her willingness to sacrifice Jon (and most of their army) might be foreign enough to them — especially coming from her — that they think she was just being foolish, or scared, or inexperienced. Jon said “we have to trust each other” — did he really mean “I should have trusted you when you told me to allow my brother to be killed?” I just don’t think he gets the whole picture yet; he just wishes he knew the knights were coming.

I think the parallel you draw between Shireen and Bran is brilliant — and correct.

When Brienne asked Sansa why she did not tell Jon about her plan, she had no answer, just as she did not in the final episode. That question I suspect will loom large next season. Maybe she herself cannot answer. Great point about Sansa versus Melisandre.

Jon sends Melisandre “south.” Perhaps Sansa will end up there too … as part of a (post-Cersei) Lannister-Stark alliance.

Torture corrupts, as does the thirst for revenge.

Ramsay’s foes previously lost because as you say they suffered a failure of imagination — they could not imagine him doing the things he did, such as sending volleys of arrows against his own troops. Much like the Japanese kamikaze pilots of World War II or early suicide bombers of our own day — we cannot wrap our mind around the possibilities, and thus are at a disadvantage.

Pathetically, Ramsay was unable to even defend himself in hand-to-hand combat. It is always to easier to hate and kill those whom we do not see. In my mind, this was symbolized by the episode’s first shot of the catapult shot, which was a long-distance weapon whose brutal carnage is wreaked far from those who launch it, and by Tyrion’s comment “Always seems a bit abstract, doesn’t it? Other people dying.” Jon’s experience of murder on the field is anything but abstract, of course. In the end, Jon approaches Ramsay in an act of real bravery — or stupidity. (Just a thought: that catapult shot was mirrored by the bell that blew into the street after the sept exploded. But I digress.)

Thank you for reading and for sharing your thoughtful and incisive comments!

I agree, the parallelism between Sansa’s sacrifice and Staniss’ is a great one.

I disagree in Ramsay’s cruelty being similar to suicide bombers’ or Japanese pilots’ though, as they were the ones at a disadvantage (againts a greater power). Ramsay was in fact in power when he performed all his uncesessary cruel acts, thus I’d liken it more to Guantanamo.

Well, I’d say overall this was one of the most satisfying seasons yet. Not that Tyrion had to spell it out during his conversation with Day (go Khaleesi)…”what about the fact that this is actually happening, you have your army and your ships and dragons…” But the ones we hated the most are dead, and the surviving Starks are finally ripe.

Is there a single man of power left standing? It seems in the GoT universe the only way to be worth anything is to be in a position of power, so following that logic this season really empowered women characters.

But what about the children murderers? Is that stretching the point that the future belongs to and only to the offspring?

One interesting thing about this season, and last episode, is that it restresses the point made in season 1: “ehn you play the game of thrones you either win or you die”. It certainly has been that way. There isn’t even room for middle players, like Margaery, or marginal ones, like her father or brother. Nope. If you want to be in this show, either kill or be killed. What that does to characters is make them more tri-dimensional, and that necessarily means less ideal. Take Sansa’s newly acquired taste for cruelty, or Arya’s cold revenge.

And at what price? Cersei finally got what she wanted, but like in a Sophocles style play, she fulfilled her destiny by killing her own son. Sure, she’s queen, but damnnn. And that resonates with Dany, when she says that what’s scary is that she didn’t mind giving up Daario, she just wants to get on with it. Even Daario warns her, “I hope it makes you happy”.

Do we have a remaining long season, or two short ones?

Thanks for all your input LFG, it made the show all that more enjoyable. Let’s see what Karl has to say.